"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

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Sunday, October 07, 2007

Born to Snooze

So let's see if we have this straight -- by talking to the pimp entrusted with congressional Republican fortunes next year, Broderella reasonably concludes that a change is a comin' back, that elephant futures are imminently ascendant.

I mean, seriously? What's the GOP guy supposed to say, that his roster of punch-drunk losers is going to get plastered next year, except in the most retarded and entrenched incumbent districts? That aside from the most stereotypically podunk areas where people will always vote against themselves so's long as you wave the flag and talk about Jebus sufficiently, most people at this point would rather vote for an illegal alien pulled out of a Home Depot parking lot queue than any of these interchangeable public bathroom closet cases?

Here's Cole's -- and thus Broder's -- rationale:

Cole, who admits Republicans hurt themselves in 2006 with scandals and out-of-control spending, said the poll confirmed for him a comment he heard this week from a Republican colleague. Speaking of the Democrats, he said, "My God, they're dragging themselves down to our level."

It all adds up, Cole said, to a political environment reminiscent of 1992 -- a tough year for entrenched incumbents of both parties who suddenly saw their margins shrink or disappear. "The American people are rising up in disgust," Cole said, "and incumbents will pay. It's not anti-Republican anymore. It's anti-Washington."

I'm always bemused by voters who still manage to fall for the Heroic Outsider trope. It's the political equivalent of falling for the hallowed Nigerian-prince-in-distress e-mail scam. But every election season some subset of goobers willingly falls for Candidate X's cheesy brew of bumptious populism and crusader rhetoric. And then they're shocked and pissed that they got exactly what they deserve -- either a lying hack or a complete dipshit, frequently both.

But in this case, Broder completely ignores the obvious, that the Democratic Congress' record-low approval ratings are coming from the left. I assume Cole knows better; at the very least, it's his job to know better. (It's Broder's job to know better as well, of course, but look where that's gotten him.) But because Broder and his colleagues prize mindless capitulation and compromise, disguised as "bipartisanship" and "cooperation", it is the "polarization" that is most damaging.

This is simply untrue. It is indisputable that, if anything, Congress' poll ratings would climb if they were more combative, less inclined to give Mister Man whatever he wants. It may as well be a mathematical axiom; The People want their legislative representatives to be either more or less "cooperative". While occasionally crafting no-brainer domestic bills such as SCHIP, designed to force Bush into politically unsavory tactics, they have yet to stand their ground on a single meaningful Iraq bill. So if we take Cole and his helpful transcriber Dean Broder seriously, then we presume that standing their ground would have given them an even lower record-low rating. Quite literally a no-win situation, if true.

But it is hard to imagine such a situation even being possible. Think about it: Democrats let themselves get rolled by Bush, they garner a grotesque 11% approval rating; but if they had fought harder and meaner, they'd be rated even lower. That is the thesis presented here, in the guise of responsible political journalism. That literally means that there is nothing Congress could do that would secure a reasonable amount of approval.

But that's what you get when you turn your column over to the NRCC chairman, transcribe his sales pitch, and give it the imprimatur of serious analysis. I mean, shit, why not interview Dick Cheney and punctuate it with a "What he said" every paragraph or so? Seriously, why precisely doesn't the NRCC have to buy ad space like everyone else?

These people churn out this tiresome, ridiculous crap, over and over again, sleepwalking through their professional obligations, and then they pretend to wonder why we vituperative bloggerses hold them up as wankers emeritii. They are remarkably disingenuous in their pretense; every column and every word they write, dumber and more obtuse than the last, makes it clearer that they are really just talking to themselves, to each other, around us.

It's just the Village Newsletter, is all, telling the people who actually bankroll this failed system how to skew their marketing for the next go-round.